[CQ-Contest] Young people / the thrill is gone.

[K4RO Kirk Pickering]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 06:32:00PM -0300, MARTIN MONSALVO LW9EUJ wrote:
> Once again I've found a new article on : "the lack of youth in 
> contesting"...   What you must assure them is that they will find 
> a playing field where they can compete based on their skills, not 
> the brut force.  I say this because after a long meditation, I
> concluded that most contests privilege brut force and not skills.
> That's bad, because having brut force takes lots of bucks (wich most
> young people don't have). Skills are in our own nature, and can be
> improved by practising hard....  <it's become a rich man's sport...>

I think that Martin makes some interesting observations, and he
has made me wonder about my declining enthusiam for contesting
as of late.  I'm honestly trying to figure out why I seem to be
losing interest in contesting, after having been very enamored 
with it for the last 5 or 6 years.  What really got my attention
was missing the last CW Sprint.  This was the first CW Sprint I've
missed since I started contesting.  It has always been my favorite
contest.  Yes, I have a new grilfriend whom I like spending time 
with, etc., but for the last year or so, I've really started to 
lose interest in contesting.  I don't know why.  Perhaps if I can 
understand what motivates me, it will motivte others.

It's possible I have just peaked too early and burned out on it.
For the first few years, I thought radio contesting was the greatest
thing since sliced bread.  I became a charter member of a great
local contest club, got invloved in the Internet discussions on
CQ-CONTEST (back when it was @ TVG.COM) and operated a LOT of contests.
I spent (what was to me) a huge amount of time, money, blood, sweat and 
tears building a reasonably effective SO2R contest station.  I learned
a great deal about antennas, propagation, strategy, etc.  I met some 
really smart and cool people.  I learned from some of the masters, and 
I made some new friends. 

I placed reasonably well in the local standings, and started to
consider myself a half-way decent operator.  I was proud that I'd
gone from being a complete CW lid to being able to operate the
CW Sprint without going insane.  (Or driving the other ops insane!)
The sense of accomplishment was a great reward, and the camaradrie
of my fellow competitors was always a blast, in TN or Dayton.  I 
collected a dozen or so 1st place section and division certificates
from all-band efforts, and even made the top ten a few times in the 
all-band low power boxes.  I had put a lot into contesting, and I 
received a lot back out of it.

Now I'm finding over the last year or so that (as B.B. King so aptly
put it) "the thrill is gone."  I really don't know what happened.
I just don't seem to care about contesting anymore.  How do some of
you maintain interest over decades of operating?  Why do some of us
fall away from this sport and lose interest in competing, or even
operating?  Is this just a temporary feeling, and will I regain an
interest in contest operating or competing?  I honestly don't know.

I'll offer another observation on the "brute force" theme which
Martin brought up.  Don't worry, we've already hashed through
the "Does Might Make Right" discussion.  (Or have we?)  My final
response and summary never got posted, perhaps because the thread
was unpopular at the time.

Here is an observation.  A good percentage of the current top ten
types operated at monster stations sometime in their contesting
career, often fairly early on.  Not every top tenner was an op at
a major hardware station, but there are several examples of this.
There reaches a point where you can only do so much with a single
tower against the big stations.  Might DOES make a significant amount
of "right" in this game, whether folks want to admit it or not.
While I still believe that skill is BY FAR the primary determining 
factor, there IS an undeniable HW factor.  I can't explain the few 
"mutants" (thanks N5KO) who can beat us all with a lightbulb antenna; 
I'm talking about the other 99.9% of us.

I wonder if my contesting career would have been different if I
had spent a lot of operating time at a BIG (but legal) station early
on?  There's a sort of chicken-and-egg thing here as well.  You don't
get invited to a seriously big station unless you're qualified, and 
you get qualified by making big scores at such efforts.  I don't know
if I would be any different as a contester.  I'm simply observing
that big time ops and big time stations seem to go hand in hand.
Perhaps I'm only stating the obvious.

What is the bottom line?  I don't know.  Part of me has lost the
thrill because I have reached a limit on how big a station I am
willing to build.  No matter how much enthusiam I have and how much
effort I put out, I will always be many dB down from the big guns.
It comes down to economics, pure and simple.  Real estate and antenna
hardware cost real money, even to serious scroungers.  Of course, it's 
all relative, and my station is certainly "big gun" to some folks.

I guess in all honesty, I've come to the realization that I will
not ever have a station of my own big enough to be a real contender
in DX contests.  Might does make right, and I ain't got it!  Underneath
that is the realization that I'm not a Top Ten operator.  No matter how
hard I try and practice, guys who REALLY know the code will always
be running circles around me.  In the end, perhaps it is nothing more
than a defeatest attitude that is taking the fun away.  If I can't win,
or at least have a decent shot at it, then I lose intersest in playing.
Perhaps this is why some great operators don't bother playing in
contests in which they feel some kind of major handicap (e.g. geography.)

Judge me as you see fit -- I'm just trying to be honest here, and figure
out why I am losing interest in contesting.  Perhaps I just need to
forget about competing, and just operate for fun, like KU7Y.  On the
other hand, the competition was one of the most compelling reasons for 
operating.  I'm not sure it would be the same, not giving it my all.

I used to compete against myself, and maybe against the guy similarly
equipped across town.  Maybe I need to quit worrying about the big
stations and hired guns and might-makes-right and cheaters and un-
sportsmanlike operators and all that crap, and just get back to competing 
with my ulitmate competition, K4RO.  I don't know what the answer is,
but the thrill is gone, and I'd like to know where it went.  Perhaps
if I can find it again, others (including young contesters) can as well.

-Kirk  K4RO


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